In fact, there are plenty of negative factors well away from the White House that have damaged our chances of tackling global warming, and many might have been ignored amid the drumbeat of more high-profile news. For the past few years, I’ve been trying to highlight some of these neglected issues that we should be worrying more about. Here’s my summary of three troubling developments that flew below the radar:
The Pollution Was Helping
One huge success for the environment in recent years has been the reduction in emissions of particulates in many parts of the world — in China, from shipping, and in urban areas of developed countries. Right? Well, kinda. While the fall in sulfur dioxides, nitrogen oxides, and ozone has been an unquestioned benefit for human health, more evidence has emerged over the past year pointing to how it’s accelerated the pace of global warming and contributed to more volatile rainfall.
Such particulates help to reflect sunlight back into space and effect the formation of water droplets in clouds. With fewer of them about, more sunlight reaches the ground to warm the planet, and storms can become more violent. Changes in cloud brightness driven by fewer particulates over the past two decades may have contributed about half as much to the world’s climate imbalance as carbon dioxide emissions, according to one study published in November. That means that we may be underestimating how much the planet will warm in response to carbon pollution.
Red Light for Green Hydrogen
There have been signs for a year or so that green hydrogen has been struggling to achieve its early promise. It is produced by using clean power to split water molecules, and touted as a way to zero out emissions from industries such as steel production, cement, shipping, fertilizers, plastics, trucking and aviation. Too many projects remained at the proposal stage, and evidence that costs would decline as rapidly as for solar, wind, and lithium-ion batteries has been thin on the ground.
Halfway through a decade that Deloitte has suggested could be as decisive for hydrogen as the 2010s were for renewables, progress is stalling. Of a still-growing 100 million metric tons per year hydrogen market, green H2 projects operating or under construction account for only around 3 million tons. The International Energy Agency in September downgraded its estimate for potential 2030 green hydrogen capacity by about a quarter to 37 million metric tons.
A Curve Ball for Renewables
Financing is a critical and little-noticed factor in the cost of renewable power. Clean energy and the grid networks require minimal long-term expenditure but substantial up-front costs. Higher interest rates make them less competitive against fossil energy, which tends to be cheaper to build but more expensive to run because of ongoing expenditure on fuel. Central bank rates have been trending down as Trump’s words and actions push the Federal Reserve toward a more accommodative stance — but the long-term interest rates on government bonds have been more sticky.
BloombergThat means lower rates aren’t helping as in the late 2010s, when they were accompanied by a flat yield curve that made long-term investments such as renewables more attractive. The steeper curve may prove as consequential a deterrent for clean power as a library of Trump executive orders.
Predictions are only worth something if you check back later on how they performed — so how did 2024’s overlooked stories compare to what happened this year? You can read the original article to decide, but here’s my assessment:
Hydro Runs Dry: Roughly a third of all clean energy is produced by hydroelectric dams — but a run of dry years in major generating regions has left the sector badly underperforming. It’s probably too soon to confirm whether there’s an ongoing trend at work, and strong generation in India helped slash consumption of coal this year (see below). Still, hydro power in the European Union fell 13% in the first eight months relative to 2024 and Norway’s reservoirs ran low, while China’s dams continued to underperform. There’s no sign things are improving on this front.
Palm Pilot: Indonesia’s plan to use homegrown biofuels to reduce dependency on imported crude is one of the most under-appreciated climate disasters out there — because clearing of tropical forest land to grow fuel crops is a major driver of emissions in its own right. We warned about the impact of a plan to increase palm oil blending in diesel to 50%, which could convert an additional 5.3 million hectares (13 million acres) of forest land to plantations by 2042. Worse was to come just a few days after we published: The government proposed converting 20 million hectares of forest for food and ethanol to blend into gasoline. The electrification of Indonesia’s road fleet can’t come soon enough.
Indian Coal Is Back: After years in the doldrums, India’s coal power sector looked to be in much more rude health. We predicted that capacity and generation might start climbing again, dashing hopes of an early emissions peak. That hasn’t been the case this year: Thanks to a cool, wet summer and strong generation from hydro, solar and wind, fossil generation is expected to fall 5%, its worst performance in well over a decade. Don’t celebrate too soon: The government is planning to increase its coal generation fleet by nearly 50% by 2035. The current renewables boom will need to prove those fossil plants superfluous, and quickly, if we want to stop them getting built.
That might seem a gloomy way to conclude the year, but there’s been underappreciated good news as well. We’ll look at that shortly.
